


What Makes a Man

by Cernunnos



Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: FTM Lamont, M/M, Trans Male Character, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-10
Updated: 2012-08-10
Packaged: 2017-11-11 19:53:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cernunnos/pseuds/Cernunnos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luce offers Lamont some moral support during an injection and thinks back to their early years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Makes a Man

Sharp eyes watch the plunger as it’s carefully drawn out. He’s watched this for so long that he knows the dosage by heart: 200 milligrams from an amber vial. Despite the countless times Lamont has done this, the thick, calloused hands still tremble at times as the needle is suspended over a thigh, searching for a different spot than the one stuck two weeks ago. That tremble ebbs away, however, when he reaches out and places a gnarled hand on the Italian’s knee.

Before Luce had met Lamont, he’d never once questioned what made a man. Back in those days, things were simple: black and white. He was a boy, and at ten years old, all he knew was that the little olive-picking bitch that he’d scrapped with on occasion was a girl. Granted, she wasn’t like most girls in their neighborhood…more like the ones back home in Australia, but just because she didn’t wear frilly skirts and knew how to throw a mean left hook didn’t mean that Luce would go easy on her.

Their friendship had started out as a rocky one: a string of fights and arguments that often had them apologizing to one another through gritted teeth only because their parents loomed over them like hawks. But no matter how many times it happened, no matter how much they seemed to hate each other, neither child could stay away from the other and so they slowly worked out a mutual partnership. After all, it was harder to beat the shit out of someone by yourself than when you had someone to help hold your victim down.

Together, they had wrought havoc up and down the block, in the school yard, and everywhere else they could poke their noses. Those had been the golden years, but just as all good times seem to do, they came to an end rather quickly. Tensions had risen in the Toucey home around the time of the girl’s fourteenth birthday. Luce had not been privy to witnessing one of the many shrieking fights between his partner and her parents, but he’d been on the receiving end of her wrath on several occasions afterward. She apparently wasn’t feminine enough for her parents’ tastes, wasn’t subdued enough and had frightened off a few children of family friends. She had screamed at him in frustration, had told him that she hated being a girl…that she’d never felt like one to begin with and that it wasn’t fair that boys like him got off so easily. When he’d queried, “So wot’re ya a lesbo now?” he’d received a rather nasty punch to the jaw before she stormed off back home.

For a while afterward, it seemed as though she had fallen off the face of the earth. Luce was turned down at the door whenever he went to visit and she had disappeared from school almost altogether. Despite having been friends for a few years, by the time Luce entered his senior year of high-school, he had more or less forgotten the black-haired beauty.

Lamont Toucey had shown up on Luce’s doorstep the day after graduation with the awkward explanation that he needed help with an injection and self-medication. The blonde had been tempted to respond with a simple “Who t’fuck’re you?” but he vaguely recognized those dark eyes and had addressed his guest by a name the Italian had not acknowledged for nearly three years. It was then that Luce’s face was reintroduced to what had once been a very familiar fist.

There had been a lot of explaining to do: uncomfortable stories about therapists, home schooling, and surgeries…arguments with parents and shame amongst the family that had taken years to finally turn into acceptance. Luce had been disappointed when Lamont refused to show him his scars, but became easily distracted by the reason the other teen had even shown up in the first place.

“My parents are gone for the weekend and they usually help me with this. I didn’t know who else to ask,” he’d said, holding up a small black case. Inside resided a syringe and a little glass vial of what Lamont had come to call his miracle elixir.

He’d been tempted to call him a fucking pussy. What kind of man was afraid to give himself a shot? But then Lamont had explained how it was to be taken and that seemed to change things a bit. It was one thing to take an injection for immunization or to shoot up heroin, but to inject into the muscle itself… Luce knew enough to realize that it must be painful and rather difficult for the Italian to twist back enough to shoot into his hip.

That was the first time he’d given Lamont an injection, but it certainly would not be the last. Not if he was sitting here now, hand on the other man’s knee, twenty years later. Over time, the deliveryman had learned to relax enough to take it in his thigh, but there were times, like now, when his nerves were too wracked to do it alone. Of course, as a ‘doctor’, Luce had prescribed him post-injection sex for those jitters and his ‘patient’ had not argued as he’d done so many years ago.

The first time they’d laid together, Lamont had refused to take his shirt off: too embarrassed to allow the blonde to see his scars. Now, though, he knew better than to believe Luce would judge him and if the older man gave those ridges attention at all, it was with silent reverence. 

Lying in the darkness with a post-coital cigarette hanging from his lips and his arse thoroughly fucked, Luce can only think that he’d been wrong as a kid. It isn’t what you have that makes you a man; it’s who you are. This thought is immediately followed with a wave of revulsion. How fucking sappy could he get? This won’t do; this won’t do at all.

He doesn’t have long to stew over it, however. The door to the bathroom opens and Lamont steps out, clad only in a towel and back-lit by the flickering glow of a halogen bulb that should probably have been replaced last month but still manages to hang in there as if to spite the man.

“Hehe…Ready for round two?” he queries.

“Like ya have ta fuckin’ ask? Get over here an’ fuck me ‘gain.” 

It's then that Luce decides that a dick doesn’t make a man, but if the quality of a fuck does, then Lamont has him and the rest of the world beat.


End file.
